Book Buddy Announcements Week of 9/7
Book Buddies! Sorry to have skipped last week, but I am officially moved into the new house! It all went smooth, but woof! Moving is not for the faint of heart. I could sleep for weeks, and feel like I will be unpacking for the rest of my life, but man am I happy to be in this house. It’s just a dream here. You will all be happy to know my new zoom background now features a proper book shelf, so I feel I have truly arrived :)
Not a ton going on this week, but I did want to let you know that I added one more book club for 2026. Monday December 7 we’ll discuss George Saunders’ latest, Vigil. Here’s the synopsis:
ot for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.
She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?
Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.
With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.
Calendar invites will show up in your inbox right after I send this out.
The next book club is October 26 7pm - 8:30pm EST with Natalie Lemle as a guest!
We’ll discuss her book, Artifacts! Here’s the publishers’s blurb:
One of The New York Times's Sizzling New Summer Thrillers: “Even now, Lena might be in danger from some of the unscrupulous characters she met all those years ago. Can she put her history behind her?”
For fans of The Cloisters and Counterfeit, Natalie Lemle’s debut novel offers an insider’s view into the world of stolen artifacts and the hidden networks that link museums to organized crime, when a woman is forced to remember the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in Italy, as everyone she knew then may now be in danger.
Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later.
Lena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back.
Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth.
Powerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity.
Feedback Group Submission Schedules!
IRL Group Wednesdays @ beautyland 6:30-8:30: The next meeting is September 16 and Audrey and Paul have floor time. Let’s try to get pages in by the weekend? Deadline: September 13.
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The next meeting is September 24 is our next meeting, and Ezra will have the floor then, pages due September 17.
Weirdlings Wednesdays 12pm - 1:30: Dana has got the floor for our next meeting on September 16. TBD if she’ll send materials out.
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is September 10 and Morgan has the floor. Her pages are already in!
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is September 17th and Maia has the floor. Pages due on September 10.
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is September 12! Helen and Ali have floor time, pages from Ali forthcoming by September 9 if we can. Helen will do a brainstorm sesh!
Gen Writing Prompt
September 8 and 13, 2026
Working 9-5 (what a way to make a living)
XOXO Dolly.
Ben Lerner has a great essay about using the workplace in our writing called Get a Job. You can read it by following that link. You can spend some of gen writing doing that if you like.
If you’d like to use the prompt this week, let’s send our characters to work or let’s write some nonfiction about something in our professional lives. Uncharacteristically, I’m going to divide the prompt into fictional and nonfictional categories.
If you’d like to write non-fiction here are some prompting ideas/questions:
Write about the weirdest relationship you’ve ever had with a boss or co-worker
What was one of if not THE most stressful days of your professional life
Begin by writing about a day in the life of your current job or a job you used to have as a way of writing about the weirdest day of work you ever experienced there (a day when something unusual happened, a day when you perhaps got laid off or promoted or offered a totally different unexpected position, a day when a coworker went bonkers etc.)
If you’d like to work with fiction, then write about a character who has one of the following occupations:
Someone who knows that AI will replace them within the next six months
A cook, bartender, or server
An employee at a luxury hotel (I’m reading The Wedding People by Alison Espach right now that is set in a fancy hotel and am loving it so had to include some kind of shout out!)
A very skilled violin or guitar maker
A sales person
A dog walker, worker at doggy daycare, or groomer
A veterinarian
A climate scientist
A mayor of a small town
A famous mountain climber
A professional sports player
OK more soon! Can’t wait to see you all this week!
Your bestie -
Kate
